king ubu

found some of the new Rare Grooves in the bins - passed the Steig and Humphrey, which means I got both Three Sounds (Soul Symphony and Elegant Soul), the Eddie Henderson and the Reuben Wilson.

not selling mine, but this site might help: http://discplus.ch/ and for those eventually willing to sell some, I guess you might have more success if you put up a list of the discs, rather than just the numbers!

- good choice!

Jimmy Gourley is also on Lou Bennett's first French LP "Amen". Not sure what you mean about Thomas not being one of those cool guitarists. I don't have a contra opinion, just don't understand what you're getting at. MG Niko indeed answered for me, as you've noted!

And as for cool guitarists... if Jimmy Gourley does count, he's on the Jazz in Paris disc of Eddy Louiss' (a fine one!) Also of course René Thomas did quite some recording with organists. But then he's not that clearly part of those cool guitarists, I think?

Ray Crawford also is on Sonny Stitt's "My Mother's Eyes" with Charles Kynard (and Doug Sides - interesting band, good album, on CD on one of the Andorran enterprises).

Yes, that Jazztone set is marvellous! Great playing not only by Lucky Thompson, but also by Jimmy Cleveland, Ray Copeland, Kenwood Dennard and the leader himself. Oscar Pettiford on bass is always an added asset, too! Gus Johnson's on drums, I think... quite a band! It was discussed elsewhere, and mikeweil's another big champion of this session.

Oh, and in a different vein than the pre/proto/actual r'n'b from his wilder years, there's of course the marvellous sessions with Benny Goodman (there's an RCA 3CD box documenting all their studio sessions from the 30s, but I gather there are other ways to get these recodings).

The Verve box (I assume you mean the Hampton/Peterson?) is great! The session with Buddy De Franco is da shit, and the rest is mighty great, too! And yes on those other live albums from Paris! There's a two-volume thing in the Jazz in Paris series that's quite good (the one from 1956 I can't say, been a long time since I played it). The 1953 tour is now also documented on two TCB discs (in their Swiss Radio Days series), don't have them yet, they usually cost a fortune. The Impulse album is also pretty nice.

There are two double CD's on Musicmasters of the 1954 Gramercy Five sides: The Last Recordings, Musicmasters 65071 More Last Recordings, Musicmasters 65101 And these are not complete, but they are close. Obviously, the ASV set (which I have not seen) is far from complete. I see - I think that's what I had in mind... thanks! Will have to look for those MusicMasters sets some day.

Hey, for once I'm not late! (well... blame catesta! ) :party:

Wow, that's sad news! But I'd urge them to try a bit longer... I think I'm not the only one who takes a while to coming around to actually buy the Mosaic releases I want. I have only bought one Single last year (the Lee Wiley, plus the Tolliver, but that's not a real Single, is it?), but now I've started getting some more. As with the Selects, there's hardly one that I feel I don't want to get eventually, but it just takes a while to actually buy those. Like with the big boxes, where I'm mainly on a "buy when hits running low list" policy... The point I want to make is: it might just take a few years until people start buying stuff. (With some exceptions I assume, appealing sets like Ellington, or obviously the Eldridge, that come and go faster than most.)

Would that band be the one documented here, and would this disc be a good (or even: complete) sampling of said band? Or would there be a more legit way to get this music? Or a more complete reissue?

There's the Living Era 2-CD set "Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five - Summit Ridge Drive" (CD AJS 2007). As you probably know the Sanctuary Group has been recently purchased by Universal and it's likely that their reissues will become scarcer. According to the booklet, this set has the complete 1940 sessions, the complete 1945 sessions, plus the 1953/54 sessions with Joe Roland, either Farlow or Joe Puma on guitar, and Hank Jones on piano. More info here and here. F Sorry for my late reply. In the meantime I bought Hindsight's 3CD longbox with 1938/39 live recordings (some of which I've heard before). Very good from what bits I've played so far! Now I also finally want to get the 3CD Hep set, and this one above looks fine. But I've been under the assumption that the 1954 sessions alone were more than what would fit onto 2CDs? And this set linked above contains earlier sides as well... There's a 2CD Music Masters release of the 1954 which I've seen, and which I somehow thought contained only parts (or rather: half) of those 1954 sessions. Is that incorrect and this Living Era 2CD set is in fact complete?

All the best, Guy! And thanks for that Duke video - fun one!

another one... just because

That's great news!

Yeah, Daniel, wherever you are: all the best, and drop by again!

Hm, not for me... there's something to a book that no cool features won't replace. You can make side notes, mark phrases (and no, you can't pull them out in a new document or anything like that... if you want to find them again, you'll just have to go browse the pages again...). Reading a book is partly also a haptic thing. I guess I'm just old-fashioned...

Which Gwigwi? This one? Never came around buying it... looks good if the line-up is an indication!

I just heard Escoudé the first time a couple of days ago, listening to him on René Urtreger's fine album "Masters" (Carlyne, Universal France reissue). He's indeed good! I played all those four Carlyne Urtreger discs for the first time, and on the first one (Masters is the latest), there's another fine guitarist by the name of Marc Fosset. I don't know anything about him, but I'm quite sure it would be interesting to hear more of him, too! Someone else: René Thomas - for instance his RCA album with the Bobby Jaspar/René Thomas band (there's a Mole Jazz disc, too, but that one's hard to find I guess... maybe easier for you Bev, in England?). And of course his great OJC with JR Monterose. He's got two Jazz in Paris discs as well, but I like the two with Jaspar and the OJC better. The Raney Visists Paris are two discs, btw. One is in quartet with Sonny Clark, the other in changing settings with Jaspar and Roger Guérin making the band (with Maurice Vander at the piano) a quintet and sextet for some tunes. Those were on two of those black Original Vogue Masters digipacks from the late 90s. The first album with Clark has been on at least two Fresh Sound reissues as well, with that yellow cover. It's the better of the two, and I think nowadays the easier one to find (though of the two black ones I kept seing Vol. 2 for years in sales bins).

not an important guy by any account, but his Jazz in Paris 2CD release is very good: Sacha Distel Jimmy Gourley - he pops up on some Jazz in Paris releases, notably the good one by Eddy Louiss. His Elabeth CD "Double Take" with Barney Wilen is great. From Raney, another nice one comes to mind, a recent "Decca Original": Jimmy Raney & Bob Brookmeyer Billy Bauer's "Plectrist" is fascinating, another vote for it! Herb Ellis has some nice albums as well... there's a "Verve Original" of his as well that is quite good (with Mariano and Holman I think) Of course there's Barney Kessel, then... haven't heard a bad note from him... I only have two of his Contemporary releases so far, but I'll have to get more eventually. Then someone else: Ray Crawford. Can't give any good recommendations, but he makes me sit up and listen almost every time he's on an album I listen to (sidemen things only).

Just played the whole Blue Notes box in one go - most of the music I've heard for the very first time. Wow - quite a ride! Some thoughts: Legacy - Live in South Afrika 1964: similar to the early studio material on that Proper disc, yet looser and more exuberant (a good thing in my book, at least in the case of the Blue Notes... might be different if applied to, say, Oscar Peterson...). Great to have some more material with the great tenor of Nick Moyake! He shines on his ballad feature, "I Cover the Waterfront". "B My Dear" is another favourite of mine (studio takes of both I think are on the Proper disc). Blue Notes for Mongezi: The highlight in my ears! You'll need two and a half hours of time to play this (which is what kept me from touching this box so long... I had played disc 1 before, but when it came to this 2CD set, I never found the time...). It's organized in four tracks, roughly 40 minutes each. The music is all encompassing - from free and loud and noisy to those great typical cape grooves and passages with chanting etc. Very intense, play it loud! Blue Notes in Concert: similar fair... more tracks but most of them flow together seemlessly. "Funky Boots" is used several times to segue into another track. Lots of fun here! Can't single out any specific titles, will have to play this one again soon! And to end, Blue Notes for Johnny: this is just the trio of McGregor (p), Dudu (as/ss) and Moholo (d). Pukwana is ripe here. More centred it seems, less urged to stretch and step over borders. His soprano on "Ntyilo Ntyilo" is haunting! The music is more bare-bones, yet I never missed the presence of a bass player, McGregor and Moholo are enough of a rhythm team. The music in this box will bring me many more hours of listening pleasure, I'm sure! Highly recommended!

No clue... they also introduced the "Verve Masters" here, which where a bit sturdier/glossier digipacks (one fold-out part more, like those Frech Universal Heritage/Anniversary digipacks). Those contained titles that were earlier released in the LPR series, but also a bunch of Coltrane albums (which subsequently became "Originals" as well, I think? Sort of like the Nina Simone series, Originals yet not part of the on-going reissue series...) Also, thinking of it, I think the reissue I have of Shirley Horn's "Here's to Life" is also labelled "Original" (same digipack with the originals logo on the inside spine behind the clear tray). Weird! I guess it took them a couple of years to figure out how to continue with their reissue activities once they stopped the LPRs (and VMEs... the Verve By Request and Verve Elite Editions were stopped around 2000 already, I think).

the european "jewel case originals" had clear jewel cases and where the coloured strip is on the digipacks, on the inner part of the traycards, it read "[verve/decca/whatever] originals" as well.